My philosophy is: Maybe you can’t always be nice, but if you can’t say something true, don’t say anything at all. I reposted this graphic in Facebook yesterday. As a result, there was some rather nasty feedback. I deleted some responses, and was accused of censorship. Here’s the gist of it, you decide if I was wrong.

“Our TOP political priority over the next two years should be to deny President Obama a second term.” Mitch McConnell — Republican Senate Minority Leader

I added this comment: Liberals wanted GWB to be a one-term president, but it wasn’t job#1. We didn’t want him to fail. We feared he would, and he did, but we didn’t want him to.

Apparently, that got Mr. Peter Pappas’s goat (Imagine that!). He came on with these responses:

He’s right, job number 1 for liberals was having GWB charged with war crimes at the Hague.

If defeating the incumbent President is the best thing for the American people, its the MOST American thing you can get.

Liberals like Michael Moore openly rooted for failure in Iraq.

“Consider the thrust of the Democrats’ campaign rhetoric – that when it comes to the president, to his administration, and to Iraq there is no such thing as good news. To them, the only good news is bad news for America. They want us to fail in Iraq so they can blame the president. They want the economy to go into the tank so they can blame the president.” – Michael Reagan, FrontPage

“The Iraqis who have risen up against the occupation are not ‘insurgents’ or ‘terrorists’ or ‘The Enemy.’ They are the REVOLUTION, the Minutemen, and their numbers will grow — and they will win.” – God of the Left, Michael Moore

I agree that McConnell said that. I don’t agree that its un-American.

And here are the ones I deleted, with the reasons I gave Peter for deleting them in [brackets]:

That was 2004. You really should try to be more even handed.
[Empty insult, contributes nothing.]

The following were directed to another friend, who had since removed his posts:

, yeah, that warm and fuzzy love crap is dangerous pipedreaming. The road to hell is paved with liberal good intentions.
[Addressed to someone else, does not relate to this post.]

, I believe in private charity to help people. It’s important to help people, just not to make other people help them the way you think they should be helped.
[Does not relate to this post.]

, keep deluding yourself that you are more compassionate, more caring and a superior person to others. If you need that to feel good about yourself, by all means do it. But you don’t fool me.
[Does not relate to this post.]

From that last statement, I would guess that Peter is not the most compassionate person. But I’m not trying to psychoanalyze him, I just want to respond to some of his nonsense reasoning.

I then posted this: “Peter, 10 responses? I have responded privately to you about the four I removed for being fluff. On the rest of them, let me just say that I stand by my statement, and the one by Formidable Republican Opposition. See if you can come up with cogent arguments, rather than merely tea party talking points.”

Peter responded “LOL. You can’t fool me. You removed the most substantive ones out of fear someone might agree with them. You’re awfully childish sometimes. By the way, I censor nobody.”

Now, looking back over those four posts that I deleted, I still say they were fluff. If there was any substance there, it did not relate to the subject of the Republicans’ agenda. While I have the right to censor my own Facebook page, I don’t consider this censorship. I didn’t remove anything on the basis of the ideas expressed.

I didn’t have to respond to Peter’s accusations, and I may not in the future. I have the options of ignoring him, blocking him, or unfriending him. I have a variety of friends, on Facebook, other social media, and even in real life. I like to give them a great deal of latitude, because I like to be exposed to opinions that are different from my own. Nonetheless, I reserve the right to remove offensive or inane comments from my personal space, and whether I offer an explanation is my call.

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2 thoughts on “Just Another Facebook Debate”

Everyone of the posts you censored were directly responsive to your initial status or a direct response to someone who commented on it. As to your charge that I am not compassionate, I feel the same way about you and will compare my charitable giving to yours any day of the week and twice on Sunday. Stop feeling so superior.

And to repost my posts here without posting the posts they are in response to is completely disingenuous. Please post what ________ said about __________ and then post my response to it. It all would make sense if you did that, which is why you didn’t.

You censored my comments and then reposted them here out of context because you fear disagreement. I find that immature, childish and close-minded.

Peter, three of the posts I deleted were a response to someone else who had removed his comments. I did not remove them, he did. Get it? I made that clear in what I wrote here. I cannot repost what he said, I do not have his original posts.

That leaves one post of yours that was in response to me, “Steven, that was 2004. You really should try to be more even handed.”